Ever since I moved here in 1984, it’s been one of the year’s highlights to hear the first robin (rødstrupe) singing in the spring and I’ve recorded this event every year since. However, it’s with mixed feelings that I woke up to this year’s first song this morning, a full 7 weeks earlier than what was normal in the 80s and 2 weeks earlier than my previous record. In the city, birds have been heard singing since January in the record mild January here…A great tit (kjøttmeis) accompanies the robin in the second video!

I’ve had a couple of close encounters with birds the last couple of days:
1) My local robin (rødstrupe) has been getting braver and braver over the last week and yesterday came and joined me and even sang to me…this is the robin’s sub-song, much more subdued than the main song:

2) I noticed this feral pigeon (bydue) on the driveway picking up seeds (birch?). I’ve never seen a feral pigeon before in the garden and I’ve never even see the common woodpigeons (ringduer), that breed in the garden, on the driveway. The only time I’ve seen a pigeon/dove before on the driveway was a probable rare Mongolian Turtle Dove a couple of years ago in winter. I started filming and to my suprise it walked towards me and passed very close and continued towards the house. This behaviour wouldn’t be unusual in the city centre, but it still took me by surprise.

I went indoors and watched it feeding outside the kitchen….and then suddenly there was a commotion in the living room. It had walked into the house and tried to fly through the window glass and was stunned hung upside down amongst the Begonias! I managed to grab hold of it and it flew off…

While most of the citizens of Europe and its plants are “cooking” in the heatwave, we are struggling to reach double figures up here and me and the plants are very happy with that :)
Our resident robin (rødstrupe) was nevertheless singing, balancing at the top of this spruce tree last night!

I was in the garden most of the day, sawing up firewood and storing it for the winter. I was followed around by my friend the robin (rødstrupe) and he even sang to me at 1m distance! When I first moved here robins were shy forest birds, but they have become less and less shy over the years as is the case further south in Europe! In this short film, he catches a worm as he’s following me! I guess this weak song is a love song rather than a “you’re a rival, keep out of my territory” song ;)

Spring can’t be stopped and this woodpigeon (ringdue) could be heard singing from the house today and I was woken at 6am (was 5am) by a robin (rødstrupe) singing in the garden (no complaints, always a beautiful moment to hear a returning Robin) ;) A black-headed gull (hettemåke) was also my first of the year and 4 pairs of Oystercatcher (tjeld) were feeding in the bay!!
I also heard singing siskin, great tit, blue tit, greenfinch and coal tit today!